In recent times, greater emphasis has been placed on national security and detecting threats to populations. In particular, detecting or sensing the presence of undesired chemicals or biological material in the environment has become a priority, and a variety of detection devices have been developed in response thereto.
In radiological sensors, if the sensor indicates the presence of a radiological substance, there have to be reliable methods of making sure the indication is correct. Otherwise, high false alarm rates will lead to the sensors being disabled or ignored by the user. One possibility is to use a fiber optic sensor, where the fiber darkens, or becomes lossy to light propagation when exposed to radiation. Situations that could lead to false alarms (indicative of radiation when there is none) could occur where a sensed loss is caused by fiber breakage, light source failures, or other failures, and thus causing false positive results.
Therefore, there exists a need for a radiological sensor with improved analysis capabilities and therefore a low false alarm rate.